Examining the Idea of the Dolphins Retaining Their Defensive Coaches

Reports suggest the Miami Dolphins are looking for an offensive head coach and like the idea of retaining the defensive coaching staff

As we continue to wait to find out who the next Miami Dolphins head coach will be, it's time to address a report from NFL Network's Cameron Wolfe regarding the aim of the organization.

The Dolphins have set their sights on hiring an offensive coach, but with the idea of retaining most of the defensive coaching staff based on how well the defense played in the second half of the season.

One thing I’ve been told to watch whenever Dolphins officially hire their new coach — they want to keep most of their defensive assistant coaching staff. They feel they are close on that side of the ball and have spoke with candidates about that.

— Cameron Wolfe (@CameronWolfe) January 27, 2022

On the surface, there's certainly a lot of merit to that because it clearly was the defense that drove the team during its 8-1 finish.

That said, it would be easy for somebody to caution against making decisions based on that too much because the reality is the Dolphins defense feasted on a lot of mediocre quarterbacks during their run — Tyrod Taylor in his first game back from a hamstring injury, a badly declining Cam Newton, Mike Glennon, a very raw Zach Wilson, rookie Ian Book making his NFL debut.

Besides, it also needs to be considered just how of the defense's success needed to be credited to Brian Flores because it would be naive to think his fingerprints weren't all over the scheme and weekly game plans.

We also need to understand that asking a prospective new head coach to keep certain assistants in place might drive away candidates who want to bring in their own people, particularly candidates who might have other options than the Dolphins.

Let's take a pause here to list the defensive staff from 2021: defensive coordinator Josh Boyer, defensive line coach Austin Clark, linebackers coach Anthony Campanile, defensive backs coach Gerald Alexander, cornerbacks coach Charles Burks, outside linebackers coach Rob Leonard and assistant DB coach Curt Kuntz.

EXAMINING DOLPHINS PRECEDENT

There's a reason this is not something that regularly occurs in the NFL, and we can just look at the Dolphins coaching history as evidence.

Since Don Shula arrived in South Florida in 1970, the Dolphins have had eight coaching changes (obviously not including in-season changes).

During those eight transitions from one head coach to the next, do you know how many times the new coach has retained a coordinator?

The answer is three times, and that includes former special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi, who was retained by Joe Philbin after he replaced Tony Sparano (technically interim head coach Jim Bates) in 2012 and then was retained again when Adam Gase replaced Philbin in 2016.

The others: Dom Capers, retained as defensive coordinator by Cam Cameron in 2007 after he replaced Nick Saban — though Capers' title under Saban was special assistant to the head coach; and Gary Stevens, who was retained by Jimmy Johnson in 1996 after he replaced Shula.

And in Stevens' case, it should be noted that prior to coaching under Shula, he had served as Johnson's offensive coordinator at the University of Miami from 1983-88.

Let's break it down further now and look strictly at assistant coaches, and we'll see that not that many coaches usually get retained after a head-coaching change.

When Flores was hired in 2019, he retained three assistants from Gase's staff — running backs coach Eric Studesville, DB coach Tony Oden and quality control coach Josh Grizzard — but he replaced all three coordinators.

When Gase took over in 2016, he retained four assistants, three on defense along with Rizzi.

Philbin is the one of the past three head coaches who retained the most assistants, six. But he flipped offensive coordinators from Brian Daboll to Mike Sherman and flipped defensive coordinators from Mike Nolan to Kevin Coyle.

So without even passing judgment on whether this would be the right course of action for the Dolphins to retain most of their defensive staff, it certainly would be unusual.